This Book Is Not Good For You (3 page)

He walked over to Cass and thrust the magazine under her nose.

The cover of We showed two skinny blond girls—the twin teen superstars known as the Skelton Sisters—who just happened to be two of the youngest members of the Midnight Sun. (Most members were much older, as in hundreds of years older.) They were smiling dumbly at the camera, one of them holding an unhappy-looking baby—as far away from her body as possible.

Cass smirked. “She looks like the baby just peed on her or something.”

She opened the magazine to an article headlined:

Twin

THE SKELTON SISTERS’ LATEST ROCK TOUR

IS A GOODWILL MISSION.

A two-page picture showed the twins standing with a nun in a white habit. Surrounding them were a dozen grinning children.

And in the background: a bright green bird with a long tail flying into the jungle.

Cass read the caption aloud:

Romi and Montana Skelton with Sister Antoinette at the Loving Heart Orphanage in the Cote d’Ivoire. The self-supporting orphanage runs a cacao plantation on which all the children lend a hand. “It’s a wonderful learning experience, like an open-air classroom,” says Sister Antoinette. “And of course at the end of the day there’s always plenty of chocolate for everyone!”

?

Cass looked up from the magazine, shaking her head. “Can you believe they were at an orphanage? Probably they just went to have their photo taken… Hey, wait a second—we know this nun!”

“I doubt it,” said Max-Ernest. “I don’t know any nuns. I mean, unless I know a nun but I don’t know I do—”

“Well, you know this one.”

Max-Ernest stared. “Oh no, is that who I think it is?”

Cass nodded, excited. “Can you imagine anybody less likely to be a nun than Ms. Mauvais?”

“So we found the Midnight Sun? How ’bout that?”

Cass grinned. “How ’bout that? We have to tell everybody right away!”

“Tell us what? We’re dying to know!”

They looked up from the magazine, startled.

Grandpa Wayne and Grandpa Larry had entered through the back, and were now standing over them, smiling.

It wasn’t a very comforting sight.

Larry and Wayne had been competing with each other in a beard-growing contest for the last six months, and they were both looking slightly bed-raggled, to put it mildly. (Larry brushed his beard religiously and Wayne braided his in two long strands—but neither approach really helped.)

Sebastian, their old, ailing, and blind basset hound, was sleeping in a baby sling around Grandpa Larry’s neck. Dog drool dribbled down Larry’s arm.

“So what’s the big news?” asked Grandpa Larry.

“Oh, nothing,” Cass stammered. “You know, gossip. It’s a gossip magazine.”

Grandpa Wayne eyed the magazine open on Cass’s lap. “Is that those girls—what are they called, the Skeleton Sisters?”

“Skelton, not skeleton. But ghoulish nonetheless,” Larry sniffed. “Why a granddaughter of mine would be interested in girls like them, I’m sure I don’t know.”

Cass’s first instinct was to defend herself, but instead she offered a rueful smile. “It’s just so I know what the other kids are talking about. So I don’t seem like a freak. Sorry, I know it’s lame.…”

She would have to live with her grandfathers’ disapproval. Today she and Max-Ernest had made a major discovery. Maybe it wasn’t the discovery she’d been hoping for, but in a way it was much more important.

“How’s Sebastian?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Oh, he’ll be fine—won’t you, Sebastian?” Larry patted the dog’s head.

The dog barked halfheartedly, drooling onto Max-Ernest, who hastily wiped it away.

“Dander—it’s in the saliva. I’m really allergic,” he explained to no one in particular.

Late that night, five people—a retired magician, a certified public accountant, an out-of-work actor, and a violin teacher and her student—all received the same e-mail message from somebody named Miss Ardnassac:

LOOKING FOR SUN?

CHEAP VACATION!

ONE DAY ONLY!

Anybody reading over their shoulders would have assumed it was spam. Junk mail. The recipients knew it was anything but.

The message meant Cassandra had information about the Midnight Sun.

“Vacation” was the Terces Society’s code word for meeting.

“Cheap” signaled that the meeting was urgent.

“One day only” meant the meeting would be the veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy y y yy y y y

Aaaargh, my head hurts!

What happened? Is it night already?

I must have dozed off in the middle of that last sentence.

Don’t worry, there wasn’t much left. Just “the very next day.”

I wonder what could have made me pass out like that. Too much chocolate? I have to admit: it wouldn’t be the first time.

Hmmm. I could have sworn I left those pages in a pile. What are they doing on the floor?

Has somebody else been here?

Hey, you don’t suppose…?

I wonder…

If a certain person or persons wanted to come in and read the pages on my desk while I was working, how would they do it? How would they get me out of the way? Might they slip me a sleeping pill—say, in a gift box full of chocolate?

What was that you said earlier? That the chocolate I received must be some kind of trick? Funny how positive you were about that. Almost like you knew something you weren’t telling me.

Not that I’m accusing you.

Or am I?

You know, people always warn children about taking candy from strange adults. But they never warn us adults about taking candy from strange children.

All those sweet-looking kids who sell boxes of candy bars on the street to help pay for their schooling—how do we know what’s in those bars? And don’t get me started on that nefarious institution designed to lure unsuspecting customers into buying mysterious frosted goodies: the bake sale.

Adults, be warned: if a child wanted to poison you it would be a piece of cake! Literally a piece of cake.

As for you, you’re showing yourself to be the worst kind of reader, aren’t you? The kind that skips ahead to the end to find out what happens without reading the whole book. The kind that stops at nothing to get what he wants.

The kind that stoops even to drugging the writer!

I should have you arrested.

OK. Maybe I should calm down. I’m getting ahead of myself. After all, I have no proof that you are the culprit. Not yet.

And I should consider you innocent until proven guilty, right?

In the meantime, consider yourself warned: I will get to the bottom of this. Whoever was in here rifling through my papers, I’m going to sniff him or her out if it’s the last thing I do.

Until then, back to the book.

Don’t worry, Missus, we take great care of our campers here. Tightrope walking it is today, right Mickey?”

“Morrie, don’t joke—you know that’s too dangerous for the kiddies! Today, we’re practicing… uh, squeezing into a Volkswagen. Or is it balloon-tying? Yeah, that’s it…Balloons 101—always the first course for us zanies.” *

Clutching tight to her steering wheel, Cass’s mother looked dubiously at the two clowns grinning down at her from outside her car window.

As with any self-respecting comic duo, one clown, Mickey, was tall and skinny, and the other, Morrie, was short and squat. But they were equally unkempt-looking; it was difficult to tell whether the color on their faces was clown makeup or leftover hot dog.

Mickey had Cass under his arm, Morrie had Max-Ernest under his. Not a very reassuring sight for a mother.

“OK, Mel—are you satisfied?” asked Cass. (Lately, Cass had taken to calling her mother by her first name, rather than calling her “Mom” or what her mother would have preferred, “Mommy.”)

Her mother sighed. “All right… but don’t forget to meet me here right at two o’clock. We have that class this afternoon, remember?”

As soon as Cass’s mother drove away, Cass and Max-Ernest disentangled themselves from the clowns.

Mickey shook his red wig in amazement. “Clown Camp? Who’d a thunk? I wonder if there’s any money in it…”

“Hey, you guys better get going. Don’t want to be late for balloon-tying,” said Morrie with a wink.

“Um, do you know where?” asked Cass, slightly abashed.

It was the first time the Terces Society had met since Pietro had decided they should leave their longtime home, the Magic Museum (having the Midnight Sun break in once was enough!), and she and Max-Ernest weren’t certain exactly where to go.

Mickey gestured to the far end of the dirt parking lot where a big striped circus tent flapped in the wind. A few smaller, more dilapidated tents stood next to it. They looked as if they might collapse at any moment.

“Farthest one from the Big Top. The Side-show tent.”

“Thanks,” said Cass. She lowered her voice: “Keep your eyes open, OK? For anybody wearing gloves…”

“Don’t worry,” said Morrie. “No rotten old alchemist is going to get past this clown!”

Smiling mischievously, Morrie pulled a gun out of his baggy plaid pants and pointed it at an imaginary assailant.

A red flag popped out of the barrel: B A N G!

Inside the sideshow tent, a row of old folding chairs sat on the dirt in front of a small stage that slanted steeply down on one side and was missing boards on the other.

For most of that morning, a tall boy with floppy hair had been standing on top of the stage taking a violin lesson. A long and hard violin lesson. He had been playing so long and hard his fingers were starting to bleed.

It felt like that anyway. At the very least, his fingers were red.

Raw. Definitely raw.

The worst part was he’d only been allowed to play scales. For three months. Even though he was an advanced student.

Yo-Yoji couldn’t help feeling that he was being punished. His teacher, Lily—or Master Wei, as she insisted he call her—was angry that he’d quit playing violin the year before in favor of electric guitar, and now she was making him make up for lost time.

“You can run away from your talent, but you can’t run away from me!” she said.

Master Wei was the toughest woman he’d ever met. Also, possibly, the most beautiful. But that was beside the point. You’d probably be killed if you ever mentioned it.

Apart from being a violin teacher, she was also the Terces Society’s head of physical defense and a martial arts expert. It was partly for this reason that Yo-Yoji kept practicing the violin.

Yo-Yoji’s main interests consisted of rock music and video games and collecting rare, brightly colored sneakers. But ever since spending a year in Japan he’d become more and more fascinated with Japanese history, especially the history of the samurai. He had memorized the samurai’s Bushido (“way of the warrior”) code, and he spent much of his free time watching old samurai movies on DVD. *

Master Wei was Chinese and specialized in judo and kung fu. But she was also well versed in most Japanese martial arts, including kenjutsu, the traditional form of Japanese sword fighting practiced by the samurai. He hoped one day she would make him her kenjutsu apprentice.

It looked like he would be waiting a long time.

“Violin or kenjutsu, the philosophy is the same,” she would say, whenever he asked about it. “As my father always said—”

“I know, practice makes permanent,” Yo-Yoji would finish her sentence.

“You think you are too advanced for scales? There is no such thing!” she would respond. “As my father always said—”

“I know, to go forward, you must first go back.”

Today, though, was different. They’d be quitting their lesson early—after three hours, rather than the usual four. So they could attend the meeting.

The message from Cass had filled Yo-Yoji with excitement. At last, they had found the Midnight Sun! The Terces Society was back in business. And maybe, just maybe, Master Wei would let him stop practicing the violin and would teach him the skills he needed to face the Midnight Sun in combat.

But he was worried about seeing Cass again. They hadn’t spoken all summer. Before that, they’d barely been on speaking terms. Ever since Cass learned that Yo-Yoji had been hiding his membership in the Terces Society from her and Max-Ernest.

When was she going to forgive him?

Knowing he was going to see Cass, Yo-Yoji had put on his lucky sneakers that morning. The neon yellow vintage ones he bought in Japan. * They were a little too big for him then and a little too small now, but they were the coolest shoes he owned. Very rare and collectible. Usually, he only wore them when he was playing with his rock band, Alien Earache. Or when he was taking a test.

Not that Cass would notice his shoes anyway. She was always concerned with more serious things. Like tornadoes and floods and toxic sludge.

When Cass and Max-Ernest walked in carrying armloads of books, Yo-Yoji decided to play it as though nothing were wrong.

“Yo, dudes! What’s up?”

He waved his violin bow in their direction.

Cass and Max-Ernest both took involuntary steps backward.

Yo-Yoji laughed. “Relax. There’s no sword in this bow. It’s just a normal violin. Like Master Wei would even let me use hers.”

“That’s right. And you’re not done practicing—you have three minutes to go,” said Lily, crossing from the other side of the room to greet the newcomers.

“As for you two—”

She pulled a long, needlelike sword out of her violin bow and pointed it at Cass and Max-Ernest, who both tried (unsuccessfully) not to jump.

“You two are next—we have to work on your reflexes. Jumping in fright is not a good defensive posture.” She smiled to show she was playing with them.

“Hi, Lily.” Cass smiled back while sneaking a peek at the reluctant violin student.

The first thing Cass noticed: he was wearing his yellow shoes—her favorite ones, although she would never think of mentioning it to him.

“Where’s everybody else?” she asked, turning away from Yo-Yoji before he could see where she was looking.

“Oh, they’ll be here in a minute. Pietro’s back in the archives with Mr. Wallace.” Lily nodded toward an opening in the tent.

Through the opening, Cass and Max-Ernest could just make out the refrigerated trailer where the Terces Society Archives were now hidden. It was marked CAT FOOD in faded letters and had held the huge sides of meat that fed the “big cats” back when the circus was home to a team of hula hoop–jumping lions.

A man in an airplane pilot’s uniform stepped out of the trailer and headed into the tent.

“Who’s that?” whispered Cass, concerned. Strangers were unwelcome at Terces Society meetings, to say the least.

“Oh, a visitor,” said Lily lightly. “He’s Swiss, I think.”

“Guten Tag, Fraulein Cass,” said the mysterious pilot.

“Um, guten Tag…”

“That means ‘good day’ in German,” said Max-Ernest helpfully.

“You don’t speak German,” said Cass.

“Yeah, but I memorized how to say hello in a hundred languages.” *

“Very wise, indeed,” said the stranger, removing his hat.

Now Cass recognized him: “Owen?” Formerly a struggling actor/waiter, Owen was a master of disguise and frequently used his talents in the service of the Terces Society.

“I didn’t know you were a pilot,” said Max-Ernest, impressed.

Owen laughed. “I’m not really. But I am about to fly to Switzerland.”

“So, did you learn to say hello in Italian?” Pietro, the old Italian magician, had entered the tent. He smiled at Cass and Max-Ernest. “How about a buon giorno for your old friend? Or do you prefer ciao?”

“Buon giorno!” Cass and Max-Ernest repeated, thrilled to see their pink-cheeked, gray-mustached, and almost always cheerful-looking leader.

He was followed closely by the tall, gaunt, and almost always pained-looking Mr. Wallace. The young Terces members waved halfheartedly at Mr. Wallace. He responded with a dry, raspy cough.

Pietro frowned, touching his wildly bushy mustache. “I think there is maybe a mustache hair out of place. It is annoying me and tickling my nose. Max-Ernest, can you please pull?”

Max-Ernest stared in surprise. “You want me to pull your mustache hair?”

“Yes, if you please.” Pietro thrust out his nose, offering his mustache.

“Uh, OK,” said Max-Ernest uneasily. Embarrassed, he reached forward and plucked an unruly hair. Pietro reeled backward.

“Ow! Not that one, this one!” He pointed to another hair, curling jauntily upward around his nostril. “And be careful!”

“Oh. Sorry.” Max-Ernest carefully tugged on the offending tendril and pulled out a small gray—

mouse.

It dangled by its tail, clawing at the air.

“Eeek!” Max-Ernest dropped the mouse and it scurried across the dirt floor.

Pietro grinned. “It is my new trick. I call it the Mouse-Stache. You like?”

Max-Ernest guffawed loudly. “I think it’s great!”

Nobody else said anything.

Cass and Yo-Yoji glanced at each other. Yo-Yoji raised his eyebrows slightly as if to say, Can you believe them?

Cass rolled her eyes as if to say, I know, they’re always like this. And then she smiled. Maybe it was time to forgive him, she thought.

Maybe.